


"A"

by Sapphylicious



Category: KAT-TUN (Band)
Genre: Jin leaves the band angst, M/M, cathartic feelings vomit fic from 2010
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 12:24:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sapphylicious/pseuds/Sapphylicious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jin pays Kame a visit at the worst—or maybe the best of times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"A"

_"So denied, so I lied—are you the now or never kind?  
In a day, and a day, love—I'm gonna be gone for good again."_

 

In retrospect Kame shouldn't have been surprised. He stood there for a while, debating whether or not to open the door with a loose, detached feeling floating around somewhere in his gut, like nothing was fitting together the way it should inside. If he could he'd thread a needle and sew it all up—clumsily, maybe, but secure—tightening the seams before everything flew apart. His fingers skimmed over the thin skin of his wrist, squeezed and felt the pulse there, and let go. He breathed deeply, in and out, and then reached for the door.

Another time, not too long ago, an unannounced visit from Jin would have made him happy. Stupidly happy. And maybe it would again in the future. Maybe in a month, or a week, or tomorrow, even. But not right now. Kame kept a firm grip on his seams and guarded his silence rather than greet Jin proper, regarding him there on the other side of the threshold, framed just a half-step from the doorway

The way Jin returned his stare was halting, waiting for some cue, so painfully reminiscent of the inexperienced boy from ten years ago ( _ten years_ , they were adults now, this lesson should have been learned already). It was enough to make Kame want to shut the door immediately and pretend he hadn't seen that.

He closed his eyes instead. But then he hated the helpless darkness that choice brought and forced them open again to confront Jin and all the problems he'd dropped on Kame's doorstep.

("That isn't fair," part of Kame reasoned.

" _Nothing_ about this is fair," he also couldn't help but remark.)

"Can I come in?" Jin finally asked, wary like he might bolt at any moment. If he did Kame might actually kill him.

"Do what you like," Kame said with a pointed nonchalance that made Jin wince. It was petty to be vindicated by that. And, he felt, wholly deserved.

Jin did come in with a mumbled, " _Ojama shimasu,_ " like he was trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. Kame resisted the urge to grab him by the collar and shake him and explain that later was not better than never. Although maybe he could take his own advice.

"So?" Kame prompted with the same disinterested air once the front door had been shut. It was like turning Jin's own method against him–which wasn't beneficial to anybody but he couldn't seem to help it. Maybe that was his own method at work. Or how they worked, just the two of them, for longer than he could remember.

"I'm–"

"Don't," Kame cut him off, dropping the pretense now. The more he pulled himself together, the closer everything got to the stretched surface. "That's the last thing I want to hear."

"Then what do you want me to say?" Jin was looking at him in a way that let Kame know he was pushing the right buttons.

He held Jin's gaze, considering, then said, "Nothing." _Everything,_ echoed a plaintive memory. Not that he couldn't guess–not that he didn't already know somewhere in the safeguarded recesses of his being that recognized with unrelenting clarity the way Jin was, the shape of his heart and the silhouette of his dreams. "I don't need your explanations or apologies." Didn't need and didn't want. He was used to carrying Jin's weight, unasked and without protest; no one was more surprised than he was to find that he had a limit.

"I know," Jin said on an irritated, broody note, as familiar as the intro to Real Face. Whereas Kame stuffed everything inside, Jin shoved it all outward. Being near Jin was a lesson in abuse, it meant bearing the brunt of the things he cared about (and the things he didn't want to care about). Kame was used to that as well. "I know," Jin repeated. "But I thought–at least _you_..."

"I am the last person you need to have this conversation with."

"No, you're the first." Jin decided probably right then and there, stubbornness setting in. 

"Why–" Kame all but exploded, too late to take it back. But he was good at staying on his feet. "Why are you here? At this time of night. We're busy with our tour." Pride kept his throat from closing around the exclusive plural. It didn't need emphasis to make Jin's expression cloud and he was lightning ready with a reply. 

"Because now's the only time and you're the only person."

Sometimes Kame almost forgot the double-edge, the simple way Jin could strike him, half the time with carelessness alone and the other half with his hands full of sincerity, pitching it as easily as Kame could with a ball of double-stitched leather. "Don't make this about me, this is all you," he argued and threw it back, but his aim was off. All these years and he still fumbled when he found himself with Jin's undivided and once cherished, now inconvenient attention.

And Jin knew it, too. "Look, can we talk?"

Kame wanted to throw something at his head. _Now_ he wanted to talk after all his radio silence. "You're kidding, right. You, of all people—"

"I'm sorry," Jin said with flintlock effect.

"You," Kame repeated, all narrowed eyes and rapid-building burn. "What do you think you're apologizing for? It's not like I'm surprised. It's not like I'm unprepared. You're completely transparent, the moment you turn your head everyone knows where you're going!"

Jin suddenly filled his field of vision with one step bringing them closer. "Then why are you so mad?" 

"I'm not—I'm not mad about that." Kame glared hard at Jin like that would somehow help untangle the mess churning inside. "I told you to do it, didn't I, when you asked us about the concerts. You looked to LA and I said, 'go for it'."

"Because you didn't think you could change my mind?"

"Because you _asked_ , you egocentric prick. Because it mattered."

"So what does that mean?" Jin hovered, impatient. "It doesn't matter now? You should have said differently?"

Kame longed to hit him, maybe just to touch him, to leave a mark, to make this make sense. He curled his fists tightly and squeezed with his nails biting into his palms. "I know what you want. I know why. You're as stupid as you are brave for doing it, and if you're going to be that admirably psychotic what can I do? Don't you dare apologize for leaving. How pathetic do you think I am?"

"I don't think that at all!" Jin's eyes went a little wide but that didn't make Kame feel any better. Rather, he felt worse.

"I get it, Jin. I do. I understand how you go after things full-speed with your whole heart, and I'm not going to blame you for changing direction. I understand, but that doesn't make it easy." That was really the worst of it. Knowing and accepting that this was the hardest part. There was the work and the stress and the pressure, but it was the understanding that made it unbearable right now to look Jin in the face. 

"I know. I know it doesn't. I just—I know I'm asking for a lot from everyone. But especially from you."

"You have no idea how heavy your slack is, bastard." And now he was stuck with a nearly tangible ghost no matter how loudly they proclaimed their effectiveness as a five-person unit. Realistically, there was just no way they could pretend Jin had never been there from the start. The thorn from before was back, maybe permanent this time, and maybe he'd stop feeling it when it sunk deep enough inside where it could stay forever. Kame rubbed a hand over his face, the row of crescent nail marks stinging on his palm—and fuck, he hadn't even realized his eyes were wet. "We've never managed closure before anyway," he breathed out with relief that ached its way out from his chest.

"We've never wanted it, not really" Jin said. Then he added more warily, "Well, I never have."

Kame believed it; he could at least count on Jin to feel strongly, as long as he was feeling something. As for himself—he could probably convince everyone but himself. "It's like a bad habit," he allowed, fixing his gaze below Jin's line of sight. "What if it holds us back?" The same way it held them together. But what was okay side by side wouldn't be right anymore. It was arguably right in the first place.

Jin snorted. "As if. You wouldn't let that happen. You'd be like an animal that chews through its own leg to get out of a trap."

"I think you're overestimating me a little." And underestimating how weak Jin made him feel.

"You just don't give yourself enough credit. And everyone else, too. You guys are even stronger than before and that's, well, that's kind of cool. I guess I mean, I know you've been encouraging me, and I'm also encouraging you."

It was strange to be so acutely aware of both the gap and the bond between them. Kame reached out to grab a fistful of Jin's shirt and then let his head drop until his forehead rested on Jin's shoulder. Before Jin's arms went around him Kame said, "I'm thinking about punching you in the stomach right now."

"Got it," Jin said, hands up in the air in surrender.

For a while Kame merely clung to him in the only way that was acceptable, familiarizing himself with Jin's scent and feel for maybe the millionth time with another million to go. He liked to think so, anyway. Even now, he wanted to think that. "Have you heard?" Kame closed his eyes and breathed in. "That I'm going to be "KA" from now on."

"Yeah." The affirmation sighed into the air as it left Jin's lungs and probably carried a little bit of his heart, a little bit of the blood, sweat, and tears that he had shed for KAT-TUN. "They told me. I said it was okay. Maybe—I think it's good."

"Easy for you to say." He didn't want Jin's "A." That was too much, and if he was half as selfish as its owner he'd outright refuse to take it.

"It's not," Jin said with a rare kind of quiet. "But you're more mature than I am, so it has to be you. It can only be you."

"It's not like I'm—"

"Besides," Jin interrupted, and Kame didn't know when the weight of Jin's hand had settled on his back right between the shoulder blades, "I don't think I'm giving you anything you didn't already have."

Kame should have known by now that there was no stopping Jin. He was an unstoppable force and Kame wasn't as unmovable as he'd like to be. "I don't know what to do with you." Except hit him. Or kiss him.

Jin's fingers brushed up to skim the nape of Kame's neck. "Nothing wrong with doing what you've always done."

"When it comes to you? I just make it up as I go." Kame kept his grip on the twisted handful of Jin's shirt and angled their mouths to meet. Jin's lips were soft against his, made rougher when Kame bit them, and Jin's hands were sweeping across his face, through his hair, with no real intent or goal which was so typical and Kame didn't want it to stop.

He was too distracted by Jin's insolent tongue in his mouth to pay attention to the direction they eventually began fumbling in, and it didn't even occur to him to take this to bed. At one point his shoulder bumped the wall and he flattened against it, Jin's hand cushioning the back of his head from the surface, and Kame's hands met at the small of Jin's back before separating; one sliding up under Jin's t-shirt and the other pushing down into his cargo shorts.

They wound up on the floor. Jin kissed a line down Kame's naked chest, and then a little left of center, his tongue tracing a pattern of slopes and angles. Kame's heart drummed frantically beneath the heat of Jin's mouth and he seized a handful of Jin's thick hair, pulling him away. The wet lines immediately cooled and felt stark on his skin.

"Take it," Jin urged, voice rough around the shape of his own letter as it hung in the air between them.

_Take it. Take me. Take this and all we have been, all we are, and all we will be._

_Too much,_ Kame wanted to say, feeling small and cramped and insufficient, and Jin had to know that. He had to know what was under Kame's skin, how he wreaked havoc inside, and he was at home there. Kame wasn't sure why that was so, and why he almost seemed to jealously guard it, but he did know this: Jin had always been too much for him.

"Okay," he said with a brittle laugh so at odds with the iron in his heart that safeguarded all the most important and least important things. Things like the part of him that always wistfully wondered how far he might have gone with baseball if he hadn't—well, hadn't a lot of things. Like the first time he realized in an epiphany of full-blown terror and amazement that he was in love with a boy who was beautiful and kind of dumb but _wonderful_ even though that made him pretty much doomed. Like the first time Jin kissed him, fast and clumsy and red-faced saying afterwards, "It was a dare! Um, Pi dared me to do it! Haha." And also the time he first kissed Jin, slower but no less awkward, all the while explaining to himself, _it was a dare. I dared myself to do it._

Like the looks on everyone's faces when they were told they were finally debuting, all of them.

Like the outline of Jin's back when he left for LA six months later. His slightly awkward but warm greeting when he returned. His palm fitting against Kame's as they raised their hands together while the fans cheered and the lights shone on them bright and hot enough to melt.

Things like this.

"Okay," Kame said on a shaky breath. Jin kissed him and his next "okay" was steadier, as if Jin was helping him breathe, both the sickness and the cure. He supposed it was true about the more things changed.

Kame didn't ask for anything in return. He didn't ask for promises that he didn't want and that Jin couldn't keep. The truth was, Jin didn't need to ask either, but he had. And that, maybe, meant something. It could mean enough.

 

_"Here's to the nights we felt alive, here's to the tears you knew you'd cry  
Here's to goodbye; tomorrow's gonna come too soon."_


End file.
